This is the first of those new Very Special Episodes, in which I sidekick for an old friend, a musician named Paul Buckley, on a road trip.

Buckley’s trying to keep a promise he made to himself as a 15-year-old: to stand on his head in front of an atomic clock on 11/11/11 at 11:11:11. But the trip quickly turns into a deeper dive into the world of atomic clocks, timekeeping and the nature of time itself. Except also funny.

Also: If you want to see how it ends, we’ve embedded video of the episode’s climax below. Spoiler alert in effect.